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RCMP launches human-trafficking awareness campaign for teens, schools

Jasmine and Valerie never imagined they would be prostitutes as young women, but they turned their lives around and now speak for the RCMP's new human-trafficking awareness campaign

Falling into prostitution can happen to anyone, to any family, in any part of the country, Jasmine and Valerie told the conference.
(DAN RIEDLHUBER / REUTERS)

By Tonda MacCharlesOttawa Bureau

Fri., Nov. 23, 2012

OTTAWA—Jasmine was a “dream kid” from a good family in York region, studying to be a pediatric gastroenterologist when she started working as a stripper.

A student loan had run out, she wanted money for the cool things her university friends had, and never believed she could be trapped into prostitution.

“I thought, I’m too good for that, I’m too educated, my family loves me, I'll never be like those girls from the streets; and then it happened to me. I met this man; he seemed intriguing, he drove a Mercedes, he spoke very well. He promised me all these things that every girl wants to hear: he wanted to marry me, have kids with me, help me finish my schooling.”

Valerie, from Quebec, met the boyfriend who would become her pimp when she was 15.

“He followed me for eight months before I fell in love with him,” she said.

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She ended up working for him as a prostitute for four years, “the worst four years of my life. You don't see any exit when you’re in this. It is the worst violence: physical, psychological violence.”

Valerie escaped when her pimp boyfriend was arrested on other charges. A “lost” year later, she too laid charges and became, she said, “the first woman in Quebec to put her pimp in jail.” He got a six-year sentence.

The two young women, aged 26 and 27, did not want their full names used, but told their harrowing tales on Thursday at a news conference to launch an aggressive new RCMP campaign, in high schools and youth organizations, to stem human trafficking.

Jasmine’s lover exercised a twisted control over her feelings, money and her body, as he did with other women, she said. One told her, laughing, “‘There is no number one, number two, number three. We’re all the same.’ She told me she was sleeping with him; he was her boyfriend as well.”

Jasmine started prostituting herself as a way to make him jealous, assert her independence, make her own money, and then “he started stealing my money, raping me, beating me up, telling me if I wanted to act like a ho’ he was going to treat me like one. And the vicious cycle went on and on and on. ”

Until she gave birth to his child, a daughter, she could not find the courage to leave. She beamed through tears as she explained how she joined a church, found help, and is now a happily married mother of two, and returning to school to become a midwife.

Part of Jasmine’s and Valerie’s message at the conference — which released a tool kit for schools and counsellors of at-risk youth — was that falling into prostitution can happen to anyone, to any family, in any part of the country.

The initiative is part of the work of the Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre in Ottawa which has produced a slick package of videos, pamphlets, posters, and parent-help sheets to build awareness among kids as young as 13.

The RCMP centre was set up in 2005 to target human trafficking networks internationally and domestically. It uses about 200 officers and analysts who work with police forces to connect the dots between disparate investigations focusing on forced labour and prostitution.

Supt. Shirley Cuillierrier of the RCMP said the centre’s goal is reach youth aged 13 to 18 who may not be distrustful of those who would exploit them.

“Human trafficking is modern-day slavery,” she said. But it is a difficult charge as it requires police to prove an accused has control over a victim who has been exploited, under circumstances where victims who have been coerced into prostitution don’t want to testify. Other trafficking-related charges, such as living off the avails of prostitution or sexual assault, are often laid instead.

Since 2005, when the Liberals first introduced a Criminal Code provision aimed specifically at human trafficking (a law the Conservatives later toughened in 2010), the RCMP says police have laid charges in 110 cases, with 29 leading to convictions, and about 70 still before the courts. Penalties can range from five to 14 years, more if it involves kidnapping or aggravated assault.

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